U.S. teens smoke more marijuana, but back off other drugs -survey

[RainDog]

15. great links and info

Life is full of ironies.

One good thing Volkow has done is to help move public perception of drug addiction (not talking about cannabis so much here) from a view of moral failing to a physical/psychological approach to help those with addictive behaviors.

I hope, with the improved cultivation methods, seed options, etc. that the NIDA is creating better product for those few still grandfathered into the Federal medical marijuana program (which Bush Sr. stopped, btw.)

fwiw - medical marijuana was legal even after the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, tho not often cited, until 1970, when Nixon created the current War on Drugs that scheduled cannabis as a substance having no medical value, despite 5000 years of use for the same. Soon after, NORML began legal action to return medical status to marijuana, and worked to do so for 22 years.

Volkow controls the marijuana that's use for the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Study.

via wiki-

The origins of the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Study program began after Robert Randall brought a lawsuit (Randall v. U.S)[2] against the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health, Education & Welfare. Randall, afflicted with glaucoma,[2] had successfully used the Common Law doctrine of necessity to argue against charges of marijuana cultivation because it was deemed a medical necessity (U.S. v. Randall). On November 24, 1976, federal Judge James Washington ruled:

While blindness was shown by competent medical testimony to be the otherwise inevitable result of the defendant's disease, no adverse effects from the smoking of marijuana have been demonstrated...Medical evidence suggests that the medical prohibition is not well-founded.[3][4]

The criminal charges against Randall were dropped, and following a petition (May 1976) filed by Randall, federal agencies began providing him with FDA-approved access to government supplies of medical marijuana, becoming the first American to receive marijuana for the treatment of a medical disorder. Randall went public with his victory and shortly after the government tried to prevent his legal access to marijuana. This led to the 1978 lawsuit where Randall was represented pro bono publico by law firm Steptoe & Johnson. Twenty-four hours after filing the suit, the federal agencies requested an out-of-court settlement which resulted in Randall gaining prescriptive access to marijuana through a federal pharmacy near his home.

The settlement in Randall v. U.S. became the legal basis for the FDA's Compassionate IND program.[2] Initially only available to patients afflicted by marijuana-responsive disorders and orphan drugs, the concept was expanded to include HIV-positive patients in the mid-1980s. Due to the growing number of AIDS patients throughout the late 1980s and the resulting numbers of patients who joined the Compassionate IND program, the George H. W. Bush administration closed the program down in 1992. At its peak, the program had thirty active patients.

Reagan ramped up the WoD and moved from being pro-legalization to anti in order to appeal to the religious right and the counter-culture haters. Prior to that he supported legal cannabis, interestingly.

Bush Sr. stopped the federal medical marijuana program at the height of the AIDS crisis - when patients could have so benefited from the palliative properties of marijuana in relation to cancer and other illnesses.

But because conservatives and, at that time especially, Republicans made it impossible to legally obtain cannabis for medical use, activists in California began supplying medical marijuana to AIDS patients in hospitals in CA.

So, when Bush Sr. stopped the medical marijuana program, state-based medical marijuana programs began, first illegally, then legally. The federal program ran from 1988 to 1992. California voted to legalize medical marijuana in 1996.

Now there are 20 states, and DC, with medical marijuana laws, and, of course, two states with completely legal (at the state level) cannabis.